Monday, February 17, 2014

It is the
latest step in the gradual New Mexication of our landscape that Marsha and I
have been nurturing over the past few years.There are a couple of reasons for this horticultural mode of
travel.First, New Mexico is where we
ultimately plan on living – but until then we will make do by bringing as much
of that locale into our immediate surroundings as we can.

We began with
our family room, which fittingly sits in the southwest section of our casa –
note the subtle introduction of the Spanish motif – the walls of which are
decorated with various arts and crafts from “The Land of Enchantment” that we
have acquired or been given over the years.Among them are three “retablos” (paintings on wood) of San Isidro
Labrador, the patron saint of farmers and gardeners who, according to legend,
was discovered by his master praying while an angel was doing the ploughing for
him.

While I am
certainly not spiritually in a place to deserve any divine yard-helpers the
religious icon’s presence nonetheless inspires me to emulate to a lesser degree
some the Madrid native’s horticultural feats.

Which brings
me to our second reason for New Mexicizing our local terrain – if ordinary
mortals in one of the most sun baked and arid areas in the U.S. of A. can grow
this stuff – then why shouldn’t we, sitting here in the rich, deep, alluvial
soil of the Connecticut River Valley, be able to grow them even bigger and
better.

We started
with hollyhocks, which, while certainly not unique to New Mexico, nonetheless
have gone on to become the floral symbol of the town of Taos and proliferate
the southwest countryside throughout the summer and fall.Depending upon whom you choose to believe
this colorful cousin of hibiscus, okra and cotton was brought to the region by
either the daughter of the territory’s first governor who purchased them from a
St. Louis seed salesman or, Sueño, a near-sighted angel, who while escaping
Herod's wrath took the Holy Family to New Mexico by mistake.

Either way,
they are like-everywhere out there.Actually even that's an understatement. I would say that you couldn't
swing a dead javelina in Santa Fe without hitting one of these
drought-tolerant, heat-loving members of the mallow family.

We got some
seeds from our daughter-in-law and son’s front yard in Santa Fe and planted
them in our first potentially faux New Mexico garden.Year uno – nada.Year dos – more seeds followed by more and
more and more rain.Mucho agua = drowned
hollyhocks.Year tres – the rains held
off and the ‘hocks soared.Last summer –
not so good.But hope is an integral
part of gardening, especially with hollyhocks.

Next we added
“Maximillian Sunflowers” (this time from our d-in-l’s backyard and harder to
smuggle x-country) – another perennial (more reliable) that also can withstand
poor soils and intense heat, and churns out large yellow flowers from midsummer
onwards.And tall.Like really, really, tall.Like cut them back in June, then August, and
in September they are still eight feet high tall.No problemo with these southwester imports.

So, what next?

Cactus.

Now New
Mexican cactus is not showy and big-limbed like the steroidal, tree-like
saguaro that can grow up to as much as seventy feet in the Sonoran desert of
Arizona.Instead it is the considerably
more modest prickly pear – short plants with flat, rounded cladodes (also
called platyclades) that are armed with two kinds of spines; large, smooth,
fixed spines and small, hair like prickles called glochids, that easily
penetrate skin and detach from the plant.

Only this time
Marsha and I are not planning on secreting these paddle-like cacti in our
carry-on luggage – those pointy needles can be a real turn-off, trust me – and
we probably won’t be going to NM until after the CT growing season anyway.
Instead we are going to sell out a little and seek the plant locally.

Or so we
intend anyway.

Sometimes when
New Mexican Catholics don’t get what they want after praying to their retablo
saints they put the icons in a drawer or out of sight in some other place to
express their anger.So should you drop
by our house this summer and you notice three San Isidro plaques hung with
their faces to the wall – don’t even ask me how our prickly pear project went.

On the other
hand if Isidro’s unsmiling face is looking you square in the eye (saints never
grin after all) then you are welcome to visit our latest little bit of NM in
CT.